


For Miles and Miles and Miles

by blacklightboy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Angst, First Meetings, M/M, a lil bit of - Freeform, and a thrift store, but mostly happy times, i loved writing this, idk why, its an au where they're normal dudes and shit ahppens, not that good or really in character but its an au so fuck you, stupid boys goofing off, theres swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 12:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13904130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacklightboy/pseuds/blacklightboy
Summary: Keith shakes his head in disbelief.  He could never do that, leave Shiro and Pidge and everything behind, there would be consequences, and they would look for him.And then he does it anyways.It continues in Kansas.





	For Miles and Miles and Miles

**Author's Note:**

> lol hi this is my first actually posted fic! ive written before but never published it so feel free to give me some advice and shit! you can find me on tumblr at lesbianaxca and all that
> 
> enjoy!

It starts in Nevada.

It’s the fifth of July, the morning after Keith’s annual “fourth of July”- really, it’s just playing video games with his brother and Pidge until the early morning and regretting it at work the next day when his eyes can’t even stay open. Keith sits up and the sunrise shines through the spaces in his blinds into his eyes as he hisses and recoils at the warm light. His internal clock at this point tells him confidently that Shiro is already at work, and he’s alone in the house. He pulls himself out of bed and waddles over to the washroom- he washes his face quickly and stalks out into the kitchen.

Through the window of the apartment’s tiny kitchen, Keith hears yelling, angered voices from the house across the street and a little ways down. Voices loud and distinctly not english carry across bright green suburban lawns along the street littered with cigarette butts and Keith narrows his eyes as he checks the time.

“Who the fuck is fighting at 7:00?” he says to nobody but himself as he blows gently on his coffee (all black, of course) and running fingers through black hair and down the front of his pale face before promptly realizing that it is 7:00 and that, subsequently, he is very much late for work, which leads to a frenzy better described as a manic episode than getting ready. By the time Keith is out and on his motorcycle (read: pride and joy), he’s already getting a call from his boss and ignoring it as he fumbles with his keys, and then it happens- he drops his phone in the rush, and it lands face up on the pavement, screen alight and displaying a rather strongly worded text from his boss telling him that maybe he just shouldn’t come in today. Or ever again. To be fair, this may have been his 5th time late this month, but hey- he was trying. He just wasn’t really meant for a stupid barista job making minimum wage standing in place all day in fuck off Nevada, what could he say?

Keith sighs heavily as he gets back off the bike and plucks his scratched android off the ground and stares daggers into his lock screen picture, a stupid picture Pidge had taken of the two of them in dumb alien glasses, his face covered by the text alert announcing his new status as unemployed.

He turns his face over to the house across the street to see that it’s residents have taken their fight outside- in the front lawn stands a boy of slightly higher than average hight with short, dark drown hair and tanned brown skin with a backpack on his pack and his hands in fists. He faces towards the door, and Keith can’t see his face, but he can tell the guy is still in his pyjamas easily- he’s wearing blue plaid lounge pants and a t-shirt with flip flops. Opposite to him stands a stern looking middle aged man in a robe- he’s got the same hair and skin as the boy, and Keith assumes that they’re father and son- though it seems pretty obvious they aren’t getting along very well. 

Eventually, the argument dissolves into frustrated crying as the man slams the yellow front door to the house and the boy turns around slowly before sitting on the curb of the road, just off the sidewalk, giving Keith a better chance to see his face. As he comes up to stand on the curb opposite to the boy, he examines the brunette’s sharp features- his skin glows under the light with a scary kind of perfection that Keith doesn’t really think is natural because genetics are never that kind, and his eyes are scrunched up and puffy as he breathes shakily into his hands. He doesn’t look very much like he wants to be disturbed, but Keith sits down on the curb across the street from him anyways. His reckless nature comes through.

“Tough morning?” he calls, raspy, barely-awake voice carrying across the hot pavement to the boy sitting half on the grass as Keith pulls his knees close to his chest.

The boy looks up and stares into Keith’s face with the bluest eyes he’s ever seen, red rimmed in contrast and glossy wet with tears still building. These same blue eyes narrow and he glares at Keith with a defensive look that’s honestly pretty impressive, and he says,

“And? So what, asshole? I don’t even know you.” 

Keith leans forward and rests his head atop his arms, leaning on his legs.

“Yeah, I guess I don’t, asshole,” Keith snarks back, because even if the guy is crying and the right reaction would be to be patient, Keith was at the end of his rope at 7:15 am on a Tuesday and out of a job and generally tired and reckless and maybe he just wanted to fight, too, but his train of thought comes to a grinding halt when the boy laughs instead of crying.

“What?” he asks, incredulously, because if he were the guy across the street he probably would have thrown a punch by now (a bad habit, he knew. Shiro had drilled that into his brain from a young age, but it only takes 6 times to form a habit and 100 to break it, so,). The boy laughs even harder, and Keith watches the tear streaks on his face shine as they reflect the sunlight. His face lights up too, but maybe that’s just to Keith. His face feels hot.

As the boy’s laughter dies down and the street begins to go silent again. The blinds on the house behind him are all closed, and Keith studies old shingles and chipping yellow paint at a loss for words until he realizes that this might be a little awkward. His eyes shift back down.

“What’s your name,” the boy across the street asks quietly, “I’ve been referring to you as mullet man in my head, but I feel like it’s a little rude. Even though it’s true.”

Keith’s hand shoots up to run through his hair defensively, “Maybe you really are an asshole. My name is Keith, and if I even hear you say mullet man again, I will punch you,” he rambles as his brow furrows in frustration because the boy doesn’t really seem to be registering that he’s angry.

“Nice to meet you, Keith,” he says between laughs, “My name is Lance. I haven’t slept in 24 hours, and my father hates me now. How are you today?” he smiles brightly and Keith feels like he’s going blind and getting whiplash at the same time. Sleep deprivation is everybody’s enemy.

Keith tips his head back at him and tries to make indigo meet blue, but he can’t quite make his eyes look into Lance’s.

“Well, you know my name. I had 3 hours of sleep last night, I just lost my 3rd job in the last year and I’m not going to lie, I kind of wish I was asleep,” he says dryly, a wry look on his face.

“Well, Keith. it was nice to meet you. This is probably the last time I’ll ever see you, but it was fun. b-“

“Wait, what? Why?” Keith interrupts him, and Lance startles.

“Because I’m leaving. I’m going somewhere else,” he looks down to meet Keith’s eyes, “Why? already fallen in love with me?” he teases with a lilt in his voice. Keith feels like maybe he’s hiding- his eyes are still rimmed with red and his hands shake ever so slightly and Keith thinks maybe he’s not really that happy. Keith still feels reckless. Maybe Lance’s teasing isn’t so far off.

“Where are you going?” Keith asks, and he realizes then how urgent his voice sounds. he clears his throat in an attempt to blame it on sickness. Lance looks back at him as he walks toward the rusted truck painted turquoise blue with chips all over. It has two front seats and a truck bed on the back and the license plate is dented. 

Keith stands up and begins to cross the street as Lance answers, “I don’t know, man. Somewhere that’s not here and hopefully pretty far from here. Doesn’t really matter. “

“What? you don’t have friends here? Nobody’s gonna notice you’re gone?”

“Are you really trying to talk me out of this? You don’t know me. We just met!”

Keith makes a noise of frustration towards both Lance and the feeling in his gut telling him this is a chance. Take it.

He looks over the truck bed to Lance on the other side and he realizes hes at a loss for words. Lance opens the door to the driver seat and hesitates before his head peeks over the top of the truck. He looks Keith in the eyes as he says,

“Come with me, if you want,” he smiles cheekily and Keith is completely lost.

“What?”

Lance’s face flickers with indecision for a second and he begins to ramble, “Listen. I said it once. I’ll say it again. I haven’t slept in ages and honestly once I do and I wake up I’m sure I’ll regret this, but seriously. Come with me, if you want to. You have no job, right? So it’s chill.” when he sees Keith's blank stare, he hurries to justify himself, “Listen. you seemed all worried about it, right? So if you come,”

“I won’t worry that you’re dead? I just met you!”

“And? It didn’t stop you before! Look, man, it’s your choice, but I’m leaving. Like, now. So pick,” Lance declares with a determined and slightly exasperated tone of voice. Keith shakes his head in disbelief. He could never do that, leave Shiro and Pidge and everything behind, there would be consequences, and they would look for him. 

And then he does it anyways. 

It continues in Kansas.

Keith leans his groggy head of the window of the truck and tries to ignore Lance’s extremely loud rendition of Lorde’s Green Light so he can get some more sleep, to no avail. He’s leaning up against a folded blanket in a Beyoncé t-shirt of Lance’s (he’s already heard the concert story like twice) and the old pyjama pants Lance was wearing when they met. His phone is sitting in the cupholder nearly dead and Lance still insists that he can’t charge it because his phone is plugged in to play music and he loves this song, Keith. God. 

There are fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror that they had won when they stopped in Las Vegas on their third day, and Keith eyes them as Lance adjusts the mirror before their eyes meet through it too. Lance smiles at him widely and Keith checks the time to realize that it’s noon. He scratches his head through his mess of hair and yawns before he reaches onto the ledge behind them and grabs a granola bar. It’s been a week, and possibly the fastest week of Keith’s life at that.

Keith has moved around before. He did it when his parents died, he did it when people gave him up, and he did it when he moved in with Shiro. The only thing that made this different was the idea of an end. Lance had decided at the very least they had to make it to New York. He wanted to see the city, and afterwards? Who knew. Keith didn’t, that was for sure. Though on the inside he was scared for it to end, because if he was being completely candid, he would admit to himself that he liked Lance. He genuinely enjoyed his company. He hadn’t at first, in fact they had hated each other for probably a whole 18 hours before they got too tired and gave up. Truth be told they evened each other out quite well. Lance had mostly hated Keith because Shiro wouldn’t stop calling when he got home and he realized Keith wasn’t there or at work and immediately flipped his shit. All Keith had sent him was a text that read “im fine, dont expect me back for a while. got fired” and yeah, it was a dick move, but Keith was having fun.

He smacks Lance gently on the back of his head as he brings his arm down from the top of the wall of random cheap nonperishables behind their seats.

“Hey, asshole, my car, my rules! And what’s rule 1?”

“No fucking in the truck?”

Lance sputters before he gives an incredulous look and asks, “Who are you fucking in the truck, Keith? Who are you fucking in my truck? It’s that waitress from the diner just past Las Vegas, isn’t it?”

Keith gets confused for a second before he realizes that this situation has a reality, and that reality is that no matter how close he thinks he and Lance are, they really don’t know each other. He doesn’t know why Lance’s dad hates him, Lance doesn’t know he’s gay, and neither of them really know each other. Lance notices his silence.

“Wait, you’re not actually fucking her, right?” he questions in a rushed manner.

“No, Lance. I am not fucking the waitress from the diner. I just kind of realized that uh, we don’t really know each other, and I spaced out.” Keith confesses. Lance’s face flits through a couple unrecognizable emotions before resting on a mixture of confusion and concern before he opens his mouth and closes it again.

“I guess you’re not wrong? I mean, I’d like to think we do”

“But we don’t. I know you love Beyoncé,” he says, pointing a finger at his borrowed t-shirt, “And I know that you’re Lance. I know you like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and your favourite colour is navy blue and you grew up by the ocean, but I don’t know you.”

“What do you mean?” Lance asks him with a voice that Keith can’t decipher very well, and Keith shakes his head a little.

“It’s not... a bad thing? I guess? I just feel like it’s not enough.”

“Not enough?” Lances voice cuts into him in a way it hasn’t before.

“I just mean that like, I don’t even know if I can trust you if I think about it!”

“What?”

“I don’t know!”

Lance turns his head sharply toward Keith. The next song, Sober, starts playing.

Lance starts to raise his voice, “I don’t understand! What do you want, my life story? I’ve known you for two weeks, Keith, we’re just here because I made a stupid mistake while I was sleep deprived and-”

“It wasn’t a mistake, Lance, don’t call it that, okay? I’m sorry, but you know I’m right!”

“Where did this come from? All I did is ask you about some girl-”

“You don’t even know I’m gay, Lance! You could be the world’s most hardcore homophobe and literally kill me for it but I don’t know, because I don’t know you! We don’t even know each other!” Keith spills, and Lance goes silent for a split second before he starts to laugh, and Keith is pretty sure he has whiplash. What is it with Lance and laughing when things are tense?

“Oh my god, Keith, I’m not going to kill you for being gay, you asshole! You got me all worried because of your existential shit for that? I’m bi, you nut!”

“Did you just call me a nut? Is that an insult?” Keith asks with a laugh just behind his voice before he can’t stop it and he’s laughing just as loud even though he was just thinking about how strange it was to do so. When the silence comes back around, Keith realizes they’re parked just off the road, on the grass. The Louvre is playing. Lance looks forward with an unreadable expression that Keith thinks he may just not know him well enough to understand yet.

“You know, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know you, Lance,” he confesses across the dashboard. Lance’s eyes are damp from laughter and they glitter as they meet Keith’s with a soft edge that he’s never even seen before. Lance looks... really good, actually. His face is flushed and his hand is clutching his side and Keith’s face heats up as he realizes that maybe he’s enjoying this more than he should.

Lance’s face sobers up abruptly and he looks over onto the country side beside the two of them and Keith realizes for the first time that at some point they had pulled over and parked on the side of the road. He looks away from the dust particles dancing in the sunlight and over to Lance’s black t-shirt and his skin shining in all the right places and covered in sunlight and finds that just like with looking at the sun, he has to turn away again. Lance takes a sharp breath.

“That’s why he kicked me out. My dad,” he whispers with a shaky voice, “It was weird for me, um, because my mom had always said that her and my dad would love me and my siblings no matter what.” Keith looks back at him with what he hopes is a supportive look- though he would bet he just looks constipated.

“Siblings?”

“Oh my god, yes, you don’t even know about my siblings!” Lance cheers, “Okay, Let’s start from the top, yeah? There’s Anthony, Chase, Mariam, Tiana, Harley, and Robin. The oldest is Anthony, and he’s 23. He’s going to school for engineering, and he always gets annoyed when he comes home because mama treats him like a baby, but I know he doesn’t really mind. I think he was supposed to come down next weekend,” Lance’s voice softens toward the end of the sentence and Keith has to mentally block himself from thinking of putting his hand on top of Lance’s on the gear stick, a thought which is something he may have to think about the origins of later.

Lance seems to recover as he says, “The second oldest is Chase, and he’s 21. He works at that shitty gas station across from the church back home, you know the one?” he asks.

“Yeah, I had to pass it to get to work.”

“Well, he says he’s never going to go to school and him and mama fight about it all the time. He always says he’s too smart for it, and he really is smart but I know it’s just because he doesn’t do well when they make him work like that. He’s...not really good at sitting down all day. He used to tell me about it all the time, because I kind of related. I’m not very good at sitting still and listening, y’know?” Keith nods.

“Then there’s me, and after me is Mariam. We all call her Mari, and she’s 17 and insanely smart. It was really weird for me growing up only a year older than her because she actually skipped a grade and everyone thought we were twins. It used to make me really mad..”

And for the rest of the day and into the night, he can’t get Lance to shut up. He’s embarrassingly happy about it when they play icebreaker games until they hit Missouri.

It almost dies in Arkansas.

As soon as Lance sees the roadside sign reading “Welcome to Arkansas: The Natural State” and begins to cheer, Keith knows he has something planned, which as far as he’s seen on this road trip, was not good news for him or at least one of his personal belongings. He turns towards Lance in the passenger seat (they’d been taking turns driving) and narrows his eyes accusingly.

“What do you have planned?” he asks, glaring (rather playfully) onto the road stretched out in front of them painted orange by the golden hour sunlight. The clock reads 7:46pm.

“Whatever are you talking about?” Lance smiles with an innocence so obviously fake Keith almost drops his glare on accident, “I’m not planning anything! How dare you?”

“Lance.”

“Mullet man.”

“Hey!” Keith yells, “I thought we were clear on the mullet issue, you dick, you admitted it’s not!”

“I never said that, I just said it didn’t look bad on you!”

“Hmph,” Keith breathes with an exaggerated cold-shoulder movement in the hopes of pretending he has no clue what Lance is talking about and not remembering that because it took him so long to stop thinking about the first time, and Lance laughs at the appropriate time for the first time in a while.

“Seriously, Lance, I’m not stupid, something’s up. What’s the plan?” Keith asks in what he hopes is a convincingly not worried voice. 

So far over the last six days, Lance has taken Keith on three “adventures” or as Keith likes to call them, “shitty tourist traps.” Apparently, since they were in no real rush, Lance had taken to googling shitty run down tourist attractions that, to Keith at least, made no sense whatsoever, and “sneakily” taking over the driver’s seat so he could surprise Keith. 

In Colorado, Lance had taken him to possibly the worst Mexican restaurant Keith had ever been to, which was saying a lot when his amount of Taco Bell trips were taken into account, and he had managed to lose his headphones to the water in the bathroom sink. Lance bought him a new pair and Keith’s hand brushed his when he handed them over. Keith had a hard time saying anything after that, never mind thank you. In Kansas, Lance had taken him to the first ever Pizza Hut, which didn’t seem so bad on the surface until Keith had nearly broken his toe falling off the roof after hours when their time didn’t quite line up like Lance had predicted, and they arrived at 1 in the morning. Lance hadn’t wanted to give up, so they climbed up top and took pictures next to the Pizza Hut sign on the roof. In one of the pictures, he kissed Keith on the cheek jokingly. In Oklahoma, Lance had taken him to see a giant ball of string- not even the largest, just a big one, which though it was safe enough for Keith to manage not to break something he owns or himself, was generally unimpressive for him and Lance both. Lance grabbed his hand to guide him and took what was probably too long to let go, but maybe Keith was just seeing things. This time, Keith could only hope that maybe this one was just as safe, because he had been sending pictures and updates to Shiro and Pidge and Shiro hadn’t really been happy about the Pizza Hut thing. Pidge thought it was cool- they said they had wished they were there. Mostly just for the Pizza Hut thing though, generally they were uninterested in not being sure when you would have internet and any point during the day (big surprise to Keith.)

Lance’s grin widens and Keith tries to keep his eyes on the road. All fun and games until you realize that you can’t quite look into someone’s sparkly blue eyes for too long before your idiot face gets hot.

“Okay, okay. This time, we’re headed...” Lance begins, drawing out the last syllable of his sentence, “hiking!”

“We’re headed to what. Lance, full offence, but hiking?”

“Just trust me on this one, Keith. I came here once when I was little with Anthony and my Mama, it was pretty amazing,” he assures Keith. His eyes light up with excitement and he pulls up a map on his phone.

“Yeah, whatever. I trust you, and all that,” he admits softly, and Lance smiles. Keith has to stop himself from thinking about how far they’ve come since Kansas because he’s pretty sure that may classify him as a distracted driver, and he continues, “just... tell me where to drive, and I’ll go.”

By the time they get there, they’re a couple hours out from sunset, and Lance turns to him and says, “Seriously, you’re gonna love this,” and Keith gets the feeling that he probably would enjoy it if Lance had taken him to see literally shit. Like, just shit, which is a problem Keith has been mulling over since Kansas- he can admit that Lance is attractive, he has no problem doing that. He does, however, have a problem with the fact that he might be a little bit into him beyond that. Maybe. A little.

“Sure,” he jokes back with a roll of his eyes. Lance slams the truck door and grabs Keith’s wrist, dragging him onto the trail in front of them. The trail is barely large enough for them to walk side by side, and Lance’s shoulder keeps bumping him. Trees surround the path for an undeterminable distance around them, so far that Keith can’t see their end, and light from the bright sun just in front of them draws shapes on Lance’s shoulders that he can’t help but study as he clutches his phone in his right hand- the one not in Lance’s grasp.

“So..,” he starts to ask, “where are we going after this? Any grand plans? Another stupid ball of string?” He continues, and Lance starts to laugh- Keith realizes that Lance’s hand is still on his wrist when it begins to shake from his laughter. He can’t bring himself to move it away, especially when they get to the bridge. It seems like a scene from a movie or a game in a weird way, a rope bridge crossing a fairly wide river thats sits about 20 feet below, rocks scattered and showing above the surface in some places. It’s... really beautiful, actually, and so is Lance’s face as it lights up looking over the wet wooden bridge. Keith’s face flushes, and he decides to blame it on the heat that isn’t really there.

“Wow, okay. I take back my earlier stance on hiking in Arkansas,” Keith concedes.

“I know, right? I thought it would be so boring when we came a couple years ago but mama insisted. I’ve never been more glad to be wrong,” he laughs, “come on, the bridge is the best part!”

“Wait, we’re crossing that? You can’t be serious, it looks like a prop from Indiana Jones!” Keith cries, and Lance gives him a look that says you’re crazy. 

“You thought we weren’t going to cross? It’s the best part!”

“Lance, it’s covered in water and also did I mention it’s a rope bridge?” Keith protests until Lance moves his hand from Keith’s wrist to grab his hand and lace their fingers together to pull him forward and suddenly he’s involuntarily silent as Lance runs away with his voice box in his fingers.

He finds his voice again when he feels himself slip in his attempt to keep up with Lance’s long legs (not that he was complaining about them, they were pretty nice) and he only has time to yell “Wait!” before he’s falling face first towards Lance, accidentally trapping the brunette underneath himself atop the bridge, which under normal circumstances he’s sure he would freak out about, but for a second he just sits up and stays, straddling Lance, hands in the air one- of which was holding his phone, breathing heavily. He looks down at Lance’s face flushed rather red, but Keith is a sensible person and tells himself it’s because of the panic, and he continues to breathe heavily staring into the face of the man underneath him, mind a jumbled mess. 

He absentmindedly registers that nothing seems to be broken before Lance asks, “Are you okay?” and begins to sit up. And then Keith’s phone, wet from the water splashing up onto the bridge slips out of his hand and off the bridge onto a rock that sits below them. Immediately, Lance yells “Shit!” and he and Keith scramble to sit up next to each other on their knees and look through the spaces of the ropes tying the bridge together and the only thing Keith can say is “I told you this was a bad idea,” in an admittedly shaky voice. All he can really hope is that it they can get it back and that if they do, it will work, because without it, Keith is stuck in Arkansas with Lance and no way to talk to Shiro or Pidge, which as much as he loved being with Lance was not okay. Since the beginning of the trip, he had been keeping them updated (they made him promise to) and without his phone he was fucked.

“Chances of us getting my phone back?” he asks Lance as he looks down through the drops of lake water on his eyelashes. Lance gives him the you’re crazy look again.

“Are you serious? Keith, it fell 20 feet onto a rock surrounded by water,” Lance explains, “There is literally no way I can possibly imagine you getting it back.” His realism doesn’t help in the slightest. 

“Yeah, Lance, I can see that, but I fucking need it?”

“And how the hell are you gonna get it? What, are you a fucking superhero and you just never told me?” Lance asks angrily.

“I’m gonna climb, I guess. It’s not that steep, right?”

“IT’S IN THE MIDDLE OF A RIVER!” He yells.

“Lance,” Keith starts as he grabs Lance by the shirt collar before registering in the back of his head that that’s his shirt, and he says, “If I don’t have my phone, Shiro and Pidge are going to think I’m dead if I don’t come home, because I won’t be able to text them. And honestly? I don’t want to go home. You don’t have to help me, but I need my fucking phone.” Keith voices as he stands and begins to cross the bridge and head towards a dip that leads pretty easily into the river. He begins to make his way across the rocks lining the river towards his shitty android laying on the rock.

“You don’t need to do anything! Just forget about it, I don’t know, we can find them in a phone book or something, you’re gonna get hurt! You were literally just scared of going on the bridge, you idiot!”

“Shut up, Lance!” He shouts back from among the water, collecting his phone and pressing the power button repeatedly to no avail.

“FUCK!” he screams when his phone screen stays dark, “IT’S FUCKING BROKEN,” and Lance looks down at him with genuine anger on his face. Keith doesn’t know what shat in Lance’s cereal, but everything is going wrong for him right now, so he doesn’t really care.

“Yeah, idiot, of course it is! I don’t fucking get the problem, you asshole, do your friends not trust you not to die?”

“No, they just actually love me! Don’t worry, I know you can’t relate!” he yells back harshly, and even though he knows it’s incredibly insensitive, so is Lance right now. Of course he’s worried that he can’t reach his fucking family, is he crazy? Immediately, he watches Lance’s face scrunch up even further as he opens his mouth and shouts, “I can’t fucking believe you!” before turning and storming off the bridge with a power and anger Keith didn’t even realize Lance had in him, a scary kind of fury that has Keith reeling from his place among the rocks and water. He decides to wait a while before he goes back to the truck that night.

By the time Keith emerges from the woods, it’s the golden hour and he half expects Lance to have left him stranded in the forest in Arkansas as he watches the orange light filter through the trees on his way back, so he’s surprised to see Lance asleep in the passenger seat, still parked next to the path’s entrance. He isn’t even ashamed of how happy he is to see him, even if he knows it’s not the same. He hesitates for a little too long while he looks at Lance’s face in the warm light contemplating how to approach this, even though he had had lots of time to think it over while he watched the river go by alone in the forest. 

It was honestly scary how long the time had seemed to drag without Lance with him for the first time since they had left Nevada. Keith had realized he didn’t want to go home, phone or not. Because he liked Lance. A lot.

Keith steps forward and knocks gently on the dirty window of the truck’s passenger side door and watches with a sheepish expression as Lance wakes slowly and then all at once in a way that Keith wishes he could see every day for the rest of his life. He feels really bad. Lance turns his head to look at him with a conflicted expression and Keith waves softly, cautious beyond how he ever thought he could be- Lance seemed to have that effect on him lately. Keith feels like he’s back in Nevada, fighting with Lance over everything from ringtone choices to road signs and which way to turn to get to Utah. Lance rolls down the window and crosses his arms on the space it creates between them.

“Hey,” Keith whispers, fiddling with his broken phone, tossing it between his hands and looking down at Lance’s face painted gold with the sunset.

“Hey, Keith,” he says back with his head nested on his arms and bags under his eyes that Keith doesn’t even hesitate to consider beautiful.

“I wanted to, uh, apologize. For everything,” he starts, and he doesn’t really know where he’s going with it, but he knows it’s somewhere and he knows it needs to be done. “I’m a really huge asshole, and I really shouldn’t have brought up your family and I’m really sorry. I can’t ever really know when to stop and I think I’ve been getting better since I met you but I kind of suck, but I think you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Lance smiles softly and raises his hand to prop up his head and look Keith in the eyes, “I know. Uh, it’s alright. You weren’t the only one being an asshole. I was being kind of selfish. I was worried about you, climbing down there like that,” he laughs softly, “it would kind of suck if you actually died. Though I would appreciate it if maybe that didn’t happen again. You know, you can use my phone if you want.” Keith fails not to chuckle and smiles right back.

“Did you want me to drive?”

“Wait,” Lance says, holding out his hand.

“What?

“How are you going to talk to your family? I thought you would want to go home.” Lance asks him, looking down at Keith’s shoes through the windowsill.

“Uh, yeah. I don’t know, I thought about it while I was alone back there and I realized, that, like, I’m having a really good time with you. And that I don’t want to go home, even if I probably should. I should probably take into account what the more responsible choice would be, but... I want to stay. So, did you want me to drive?”

Lance nods and so he gets into the driver’s seat and he drives the rest of the way through Arkansas pretending he’s not in love the whole time.

He decides in Ohio. 

Lance doesn’t seem to find any tourist traps in Ohio online that piques his interest, or at the very least if he has he hasn’t hinted to it at all. They’ve been getting along better than ever since Arkansas, but Keith knows there’s something different about it now. Lance always seems so careful now, won’t grab his hand and pull him around and laugh at the wrong times and Keith misses it, quite frankly, but he also acknowledges that maybe it’s a good thing for him and his minor crushing problem, because at this point it’s been 10 days and 10 states with only Lance by his side and he loves him. A lot more than he really feels comfortable with, because he knows that Lance could never feel them same, not the way Keith feels when he watches Lance flirt with every barista in Missouri and every waitress in Utah and then comes back to Keith and still manages to make him feel the way he does. 

Truth be told, he’s really just holding on until New York at this point, because as far as he and Lance are concerned it’s the last time they’ll see each other- Keith plans to go back home to Shiro, and Lance says he’s gonna stay and “find himself.” Keith understands when Lance tells him about it- Lance even asks him if he wants to stay with him. Keith had never felt his stomach twist harder than when he told Lance no. He tries not to think about the fact that they have at most 2 more days together.

He actually does really well dealing with this new development until Lance is in the driver’s seat and they’re just past Columbus, a little while out from Pennsylvania and Lance is jamming to  
The Front Bottoms’ Vacation Town and Keith realizes something.

“Lance...” Keith starts.

“Yes, Keith?” he answers.

“We’re not headed to Pennsylvania. We’re just going north.”

“Ugh, Keith!” Lance exclaims, “Can you stop being so observant and just let me surprise you for once? Actually, you know what,” he grins across the console in the early morning light and Keith neglects to mention that he has some major bedhead going on because it’s a guilty pleasure of his- it looks almost frustratingly adorable.

“What?” Keith decides to humour him.

“I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just have to find out when we get there... by which I mean I don’t really know?” He confesses with a sheepish glance towards Keith, “I wanted to do one more thing before we go to New York since we won’t see each other again after that, right?” Keith nods and tells himself not to get caught up on that last part, and Lance continues, “Well, I couldn’t really find anything interesting online but I heard about this lighthouse over lake Erie and it sucks that it’s not going to be night when we get there, but I thought maybe we could spend the day?”

“Sure,” Keith assures him, trying to use the most casual dry tone he can muster.

When Lance stops the car, it’s around 11 and the sky is grey. He hasn’t said anything about the rain that’s coming, and Keith is just hoping it holds out for a while. He and Lance step out of the car and walk towards the lighthouse sitting on top of a ledge a ways out from the water. Lance looks up to the balcony surrounding the light before he narrows his eyes, puffs out his chest and places his hands on his hips. 

“Let’s go,” he declares, walking straight towards the door to the lighthouse. Keith gives him a confused look and pretends he doesn’t think about how a couple days ago this would have been when Lance grabbed his hand and dragged him away in a whirlwind of laughter.

“Let’s go where?” he buzzes as he works to keep up with Lance’s absurdly long legs.

“Up the lighthouse, man,” Lance responds with a smirk before moves his hand to the door handle and yanks quickly before his face goes blank when the door doesn’t open, and then Keith watches as he beings to comically pout. Keith laughs, and he continues, “I’m serious, Keith! I really wanted to go up!” he says, and an idea dawns on Keith, never one to turn down a risk.

“Hey, do you have a bobby pin somewhere?” He asks trying to stop the smirk he feels slowly growing on his face. He watches as Lances’s eyes widen with a childish glee Keith wishes he could see forever.

“Wait. Right. Here,” Lance screeches before he takes off towards the truck, and Keith follows his instructions, waiting next to the lighthouse door silently thanking god for his teen self and his love of reckless behaviour- knowing how to lock pick has never felt so rewarding. He kicks at a can as he watches Lance rifle through the truck’s many crevices of garbage and miscellaneous items before he emerges.

“Keith!” cheers as he races back up the sloping hill atop the cliff with glee painted across his features, “You are so lucky mama made me drive Ti and Harley to school every morning,” he says, panting with his left hand and his back curled as his right held up two black bobby pins. Keith can feel the smile on his face in every facet of his being as Lance says says, “Go for it.”

“Yes sir,” Keith laughs as he takes them from Lance’s hand and sets to work as Lance cheers him on from the sidelines. It takes a minute, but when the lock clicks he’s never felt more satisfied. Lance bounces on his toes and smiles up at Keith lightheartedly as he rips the door open and surges into the centre of the small circular room taken up mostly by a spiral staircase and doesn’t even stop to look back at Keith as he skips steps to the top, and the other doesn’t even have to think about it before he’s doing the same and a couple seconds later Lance is throwing open the door at the top and pulling Keith out onto the wooden balcony surrounding the light. The first thing Keith feels is the rain bearing down against him.

He looks to Lance standing to his right as the rain falls over the lighthouse and subsequently it’s balcony. Little spots of light slip through spaces in the clouds and land on the ground around the two of them and he fiddles with the bobby pin in his hand in a trance as he watches ’s eyes sparkle and his face light up. He turns his head to look at Keith with a smile spread across his stupidly beautiful face. Keith has to take a second.

“I was hoping it would rain, it never happens back home!”

“You were... hoping it would rain?”

“Yeah, duh! Who doesn’t love the rain!” he smiles with his arms spread wide on either side of his body and sighs happily as the water hits his skin, “god, this never happened at home!” 

“We’re from Nevada. Of course this didn’t happen.”

“You’re from Nevada. We moved there from Cuba when I was ten. Do you know how much I missed the rain? It’s not really the same here... but it’s close enough,” he explains before Keith notices his face light up as though he’s getting an idea, and Keith watches as he pauses and it darkens again as though he’s scolding himself. 

“Well,” Lance starts with his face flushed an impressively captivating red, “Uh, back home whenever it rained my parents used to go out into the yard and dance. I was going to ask you to dance with me until I realized how... weird that is, haha,” he smiles awkwardly and his shoulders raise as he studies his feet with a fabricated laugh and an idea dawns on Keith that he thinks may top the lock picking. 

“Sure,” he answers unsteadily and gives his best, most decisive smile. Lance looks down at him with captivation in his eyes and his face lights up in a way Keith has never seen and Keith realizes he doesn’t regret loving Lance at all when a raindrop lands in his eyes and Lance laughs and grabs his hand as he flinches away from it and they stumble down the stairs and to the grassy space below the balcony, clumsy on their feet.

Keith feels the water on the ground begin to seep into his shoes as Lance looks up and asks him, “Do you even know how to dance?” Before realizing the answer when Keith's face goes blank and is immediately overtaken with a sheepish look as he shrugs guiltily. Lance looks at him like he’s committed the ultimate crime.

“Who raised you?” Lance cries with his nose scrunched and an exited lilt in his voice.

“We’ve established this, Lance. Nobody. S’kinda my thing,” Keith jokes. 

Lance laughs raucously as he grabs Keith's waist, pulls him close and loudly declares, “I guess this task falls to me, then, orphan boy,” and Keith sputters and stumbles over his tongue when Lance’s hand rests on the small of his back and he smiles like the sun before he starts to hum, takes Keith hand and the cold rain hits them like bullets.

Keith watches their feet with the eyes of a hawk and takes it all in with his hands wrapped loosely around Lance’s neck; the wet squish of their shoes that makes him cringe and the low drawl of the song that Lance hums on repeat as he leads with hypnotic ease that he could watch for hours. He looks at Lance, who in turn looks out onto the grey sea and Keith knows he likes the rain but he also knows he’s sure Lance wishes the lake was blue and clear as day. If Keith was being real, he liked it the way it was, because without the rain soaking through his clothes he wouldn’t be here, body pressed with Lance’s and their faces inches away from each other. 

“Um,” Lance whispers, breaking the trance and causing Keith’s eyes snap to meet his only to find them still set on the water, and Lance mutters, “You asked why I still talk about my family so much. Why I don't hate them,” he says, and Keith nods in silent support.

“I know it’s weird but I... don't actually feel any different. I know, right? I’m on the edge of lake Erie in Ohio who knows how many states from home dancing with the rain with a guy I met like a week ago and I don't feel any different than I did before. It’s like- this is just my life now. It doesn’t really make any sense but it’s not even on my mind, I guess I’m adaptable.”

“Maybe you’re just settling,” Keith says, voice hushed like he’s telling a secret he shouldn't as he steps in sync with Lance, careful eyes studying their feet below so he doesn't have to watch as Lance blanches in a sorrowed realization.

“Yeah,” the taller says as he swallows dryly in an attempt to hide his scratchy throat from the other, “maybe you’re right. But I think that family is so important I may never be able to hate them. Besides, it wasn’t like my mom or my brothers and sisters weren’t accepting. They had already known for a while, and-”

“...And they sat and watched and let you leave,” Keith finishes as the familiar feeling of crossing boundaries he shouldn't creeps up his back from the place where Lance’s hand rests shaking now. Keith looks up for the first time and faces Lance with a high chest and shoulders and breathes deeply.

“It’s okay to love them,” he declares admittedly shakily, “but it’s okay to be hurt too. it took me a long time to learn that after my parents left,” he advises before almost immediately tripping on Lance’s foot because he stopped looking at the grass. Lance tumbles over him and they land on the grass, Keith with his knees nearly through his chest and Lance with his hands on either side of Keith and his body an inch from Keith's folded legs, and for once, when Keith would expect him to, Lance laughs. And then he starts to cry, and cry and cry. His eyes are red and his head on Keith's shoulder until they reach Pennsylvania, and somewhere along the way, Keith decides to the tune of Bae by The Front Bottoms that he wants Lance to love him too. 

 

In Pennsylvania it keeps going. 

As soon as they get close to New York, Lance’s face darkens gradually and Keith’s heart gets heavier along with the atmosphere in the truck. Lance’s hands grip the steering wheel as he pulls off to the side about a half-hour from the border and pulls his phone out and Keith watches in curious fascination. 

“What are you doing?” Keith asks, head resting on Lance’s shoulder from behind peering over at his phone. Lance shoves him off playfully and turns his way.

“Looking for something to do,” Lance announces with a wry smile on his face as he looks over at Keith and plugs his phone into the truck’s console. Keith raises a dark eyebrow, leans back facing towards Lance and crosses his arms. 

“We’re basically in New York already, I thought you didn’t wanna take any longer?” Keith teases.

Lance looks up from his phone with his arms crossed, mirroring Keith from the other side of the car and asserts, “Well, if you’re in such a hurry, we don’t have to!”

“Nah, I don’t have anywhere to be. Anything interesting?” he asks as he snatches Lance’s phone from his hand and unlocks it (he changed the password to Keith a day or so after Arkansas. It was a peace offering.) He jumps when Lance gives a small gasp and smiles over at Keith excitedly. 

“Let’s go thrifting!” he cheers. 

-

Keith busts into thunderous laughter when Lance turns around dramatically with a pair of alien-themed oval sunglasses in neon green sat neatly on his face, and Lance subsequently laughs at him in a multicoloured oversized Hawaiian shirt.

“What?” he asks, pouting comically, “Is it not a good look?”

“No, it looks lovely, Keith,” Lance snorts with shaking shoulders and an iron grip on the clothes rack to his right. “just amazing. really goes with the black skinny jeans, you emo fuck,”

“Hey!” Keith cries, “at least I don't own these,” he declares as he pulls a pair of leather fingerless gloves from a box on the shelf behind him. Lance laughs again as he slips them on and makes a grabby motion with his hands in the air. “Honestly? these are pretty cool, right?”

“Keith I swear to god if you buy those,” Lance threatens with a smile in his voice and spread across his face, too. Wide and wracked with laughter barely held in like Keith has seen it many times before. He loves it just as much as the first time.

“well, now I have to,” he teases, “and look! they’re only $2!” Lance laughs and takes off the glasses. 

“Oh my god, you emo fuck.”

“I’m buying them,” He laughs as he takes off toward the cash, Lance running after him with laughter and protest on his lips at the same time through whatever type of magic Keith knew he was secretly capable of. How else would he make Keith feel this way? And also make him buy stupid gloves. That too.

It ends in New York where they had both agreed it would, but not in the way they expected.

Keith swallows dryly when they pass the state marker reading “The Empire State” and taps his fingers with the beat of The Smith Street Bands’ Shine to distract himself from the inevitable end. He absentmindedly thinks of the leather gloves in the back pocket of his black jeans and stares out the window at the passing trees and strains his mind to think of anything but the minutes winding down- anything to keep him from looking at the clock and tallying the time in his head. He hasn’t looked at Lance since they crossed their last state line, and he feels like it’s a waste to throw away the last few minutes he has to stare at his face, hopelessly into him. He pretends not to take notice when the landscape becomes more urban and the corners of his eyes start to sting as Lance pulls off the road a mile or so out from NYC. At first, he doesn’t even realize they’ve stopped, and then Lance coughs and Keith snaps out of his pre-greiveing haze, turning to look at Lance on his left. He studies Lance’s figure, darkened by the light behind him shining in through the windows and watches his fingers tap the wheel. The light behind him is so affecting Keith almost doesn’t see the red splayed across Lance’s cheeks.

“Uh, Lance..?” he whispers uncertainly, rubbing his knuckles with his thumb, hands in his lap. Lance turns his head and the sun shines behind him, giving him a halo of light. He tilts his head ever so slightly and looks at Keith's collarbones from the side with hesitation colouring his being, face schooled carefully into what Keith can tell is false composure, calm he’s trying but failing to conjure under the heavy weight of sad anticipation layered over their heads.

“Yeah?” Lance chokes out, face souring ever so slightly as his eyes trace over Keith's shoulders, “What’s up?”

“Why did you stop?” Keith asks as he turns his head towards Lance to try and catch his avoidant eyes. Lance catches his line of sight and all Keith can see is blue.

“I wanted to ask you something before you’re gone. Because, you know, I know we said we probably won’t see each other again at least physically, like, in person, for a good while. And I want you to be my friend no matter what, yeah?” Keith nods with a furrowed brow displaying clearly on his face his confusion. “can you promise? This will probably freak you out” he asks shakily as he turns back towards the road, and hold up his pinkie in an almost frustratingly endearing action. Keith almost feels bad that he loves him. It feels like keeping an important secret from someone you trust.

“Yeah, Lance. I promise,” he assures quietly, trying his hardest to smile comfortingly.

The silence stretches.

“Can I kiss you?” Lance whispers, less of a question and more of a statement, a vacant admission of guilt, or a shameful admittance. Keith’s mind stops working at about the moment he realizes Lance likes him too. His brain grinds to a halt slowly and he studies lance’s face with his own, blank with astonishment. Lance shrinks under his gaze, and he snaps out of his haze to realize it’s been a minute. “Haha, yeah, see? I told you it would freak you out,” he laughs unsteadily, face and composure cracking and splitting at the seams. He laughs again and tries to sneakily wipe at his eyes without much success. Keith feels the opportunity slipping through his fingers like sand.  
“Lance?” He asks with a voice laced with determination.

Keith looks at lance in the eyes, facing him over the console. lances figure casting a shadow on his face, protecting him from the sunlight that shines overtop of them. And then he kisses him. It takes lance a second to respond to the clumsily rushed action, and keith accidentally bumps their noses in a moment of hurried passion. It’s awkward in a way that Keith has never known to be attractive or endearing before now. Lance wastes no time in kissing back when he finally registers what’s happening, and it’s possibly the most uncomfortable thing he’s experienced, leaning over the console and scrambling to find something solid to lean on, but as cliche as it is, Keith finds it to be pretty perfect. The kiss breaks when Keith feels Lance start to smile and laugh against his mouth. He gently pulls away from Lance and laughs along with him softly, raising an eyebrow at the sudden outburst but unable to keep the happiness within him at bay- he can’t help the bubbling laughter shining in his chest. He squints through the sunshine and his eye would meet Lance’s, but Lance is too busy laughing his head off. He watches Lance’s nose scrunch up, mouth split like a chasm across his face as the other stares up at the truck’s roof, his whole body shaking. 

Once Lance’s laughter dies down, his head lowers and his eyes meet Keith’s. His smile is wide and barely contained on his face- Keith is a little worried his face might crack in half. He barely manages to keep the peace and not start laughing all over again. He sits in the comfortable, warm silence and just studies the threads of Lance’s blue T-shirt, and then switches to watching the sun set behind him, and then back again.

“Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna miss you when you leave.”

“Me too, Lance. I’m gonna miss you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> -title taken from the front bottom's song far drive its great  
> -theres probably gonna be more in this verse bc . i love it  
> thanks for reading yall


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